It didn’t take long after UEFA announced the format for concluding this season’s Champions League for the first problems to emerge. On Wednesday, UEFA president Alesander Ceferin had confirmed that the quarterfinals onwards will be played over a period from Aug. 12-23 in Lisbon, Portugal. Less than 24 hours later, Timo Werner had confirmed that he will have left RB Leipzig by then to begin his new contract at Chelsea.
Nothing in this is straightforward. UEFA's solution is probably the most sensible it could have come up with to salvage the competition. With domestic leagues struggling to reach a conclusion, it couldn’t realistically have imposed additional games into their crowded calendars but had to wait until those seasons had come to an end.